


Brides of the Iron Fist

by Sholio



Category: Iron Fist (TV)
Genre: Accidental Marriage, Aliens Made Them Do It, Culture Shock, Empathy, F/M, Families of Choice, Magic Made Them Do It, Soul Bond, Telepathy, Unconventional Families, Weird Plot Shit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-03
Updated: 2019-08-03
Packaged: 2020-07-08 11:55:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19869235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: "And they definitely won't execute me if I have dependents," Danny said, and waved his hands vigorously at Ward and Misty, while they stared at him."We're not your dependents," Ward said, managing to pack a truly impressive amount of horror into his tone without actually raising his voice. "We're your accidentally married kung fu spouses or ... something.""I want this day to not have happened," Colleen said, pressing her forehead against the bars.





	Brides of the Iron Fist

**Author's Note:**

  * For [dirty_diana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dirty_diana/gifts).



"Wait," Misty said. "You want me to go with you _where_ and tell who _what?"_

"I can explain," Ward said hastily.

"It better be good."

*

He took her to lunch (a very good lunch, she had to admit; it was an overpriced but tasty gourmet burger) and explained. It was not a very good explanation.

"There's a secret gate to K'un Lun in the sewers under New York," she said slowly, poking at her chili fries. "Is this the same or different from the secret dragon gate we closed two years ago?"

"Different," Ward said promptly. "... I think. Please don't ask me for details. The point is, the gateway to K'un Lun opens in a different location every time, and Danny had some kind of rambling bullshit explanation that I didn't pay attention to, especially since I'm pretty sure he didn't even know it did this until just recently, but the point is, it's open in New York for a very short period of time."

"How short?"

"Don't know, and neither did he. But Danny and Colleen are there now, and they're trapped."

"How do you know they're trapped?" Misty asked. "As opposed to just touristing around the monastery or whatever."

"Because something has obviously gone wrong!" Ward snapped. "They got marched back at, er, at monkpoint to deal with the whole 'two Iron Fists' situation, and they _didn't come back._ And the gate could close at any time, and then they'll be stuck."

She had to admit that it sounded like there was a problem. "And you said you tried to get in."

"Yeah. They won't let me because of the Hand thing. But if you --"

"Hand thing."

"My dad," he said. Misty just looked at him blankly. An odd look crossed his face. "You don't know about my dad," he said, almost to himself.

"Harold Meachum? Bigwig in the 1% set? Took a header off the top of his own building a couple of years ago?"

"Yeah," Ward said quietly. "That's Harold. _Anyway._ He made a lot of enemies, some of them in K'un Lun. So they won't let me in, and I need your help to get there."

Misty toyed with the dull knife she'd been given to cut up her overpriced gourmet burger, rolling it casually between the fingers of her prosthetic hand, and looked across the table at him. Ward Meachum, billionaire and by all accounts general asshole, the man who had once saved her life and was now prepared to go charging into a magic city full of people who hated him to rescue a friend.

What she said, however, was: "I don't see how me coming with you is going to help with that. Unless you plan on shooting our way past the guards on the gate."

"I think they'll have more trouble saying no if at least one of us isn't a well-known Hand sympathizer." His lip curled slightly as he said it. "And if we can claim conjugal rights --"

"Yeah, okay, that's the part of your explanation I'm still having some trouble with."

"I explained about the healing thing," Ward said.

"Healing someone with the Iron Fist is how the Iron Fists get married, yeah, _I know_ , you said that. It still doesn't make any sense."

"It's cultural or something. I know it's a stupid custom, but it's the one we're stuck with."

Misty took a slow breath. They were _the worst_ people to do this, she thought. Even if she didn't think the whole plan was stupid to begin with, they were going to be in K'un Lun for all of ten minutes before Ward insulted someone's deeply held cultural beliefs and they got ninja'd to death.

"Right," she said at last. "Danny healed you on your round-the-world road trip, so you've been trying to convince them that you're married to him and therefore need to be allowed in to see him."

"And he did magic first aid on you after Midland Circle, right? I remember he talked about it."

"Yes," she said, telling herself that the stump of her arm didn't ache; it was only her imagination. She put the knife down.

"So," Ward said, in a QED kind of way.

"Is all of this really necessary?" Misty asked. "Danny and Colleen are good friends, and I'm all for helping you rescue them, but I don't see why a fake marriage is needed. We could just ask --"

"I tried asking!"

"... let me rephrase. Someone who's not you could try asking."

"Be my guest," Ward said. "But listen, it's not a _fake_ marriage. According to K'un Lun's head honchos, we really _are_ married to Danny, stupid as it sounds --"

"I can't imagine why they won't let you in," Misty said dryly. "Okay, fine, I'm in. Though I'll be honest, the main reason why I'm going with you is because I want to see Colleen's face when she finds out that you've decided Danny has a harem and you're part of it."

*

There was no convenient WikiHow guide to packing for a trip to a magic kung fu city, so Misty threw some clean underwear, a toothbrush, and a paperback book into a backpack, called the station to tell them she needed a couple of days for a sudden family emergency, and met Ward at ...

"... the North River wastewater treatment plant?"

"Don't ask me, it's not _my_ secret mystical city in the sewers," Ward said. 

He was slouched against a wall with a small duffel slung over his shoulder, casually dressed in a leather jacket and jeans, which Misty took a moment to appreciate. 

"By the way," Ward said, nodding to her shoulder holster, "they won't let you take guns into the city. Danny's magic chi guns are back at his place. Apparently it's a rule. I tried hiding a gun in my bag the last time and it didn't work. They just _know."_

"Coulda told me this before," she grumbled, and went to leave her service weapon in the trunk of the car, breaking about a half dozen regs in the process.

When she came back, Ward glanced around as if he thought they were being spied on, and then swiped a key card to open a door into a stairwell going down.

"Notice me not asking you where you got that from," Misty remarked as they went down a long, echoing flight of concrete stairs.

"Notice me not answering."

"Noted."

At the bottom of the stairs, Ward unlocked a grate and they entered a tunnel. It was pitch dark, and Ward paused to get a flashlight out of his duffel. From the rusty water stains on the walls and ancient knots of dried mud and dead leaves, Misty guessed it was a storm drain -- and not a recently built one. The walls were vaulted brickwork, the floor dry.

There was a lot of this kind of thing under the city, she knew. Exaggerated as the New York sewers were in urban legend, the city _did_ have nearly four centuries of history underneath it. There were abandoned storm drains and subway tunnels, bricked-up cellars, hidden Prohibition passageways and storerooms. A gateway to a magic city was a _bit_ much, but what did she know?

The brickwork soared higher above them, vanishing into shadows. The tunnel was sloping down, easily wide enough her for the two of them to walk side by side. Misty wondered if they were under the river; the chilly dampness suggested it.

"Is it far?" she asked. Her voice echoed back to her. 

"Not far," Ward said, and as if in answer, she became aware that the darkness was no longer complete. There was light up ahead, warm and gold and flickering, like a campfire. Ward flicked off the flashlight, and suddenly they were walking in twilight lit by soft gold. 

When they turned a corner, there was golden light all around them, dozens of lamps sitting in recesses in the walls and on low stone pedestals. The air was much warmer here, almost oppressively so. Misty passed her hand over one of the lamps to confirm for herself that the flickering lights were real flames, glimmering in pools of clear oil.

Up ahead, a pair of ornately carved doors blocked the tunnel, soaring up to the brickwork ceiling some fifteen feet above their heads. The doors couldn't possibly be made of solid gold, but they glimmered as if they were, decorated with inlaid patterns of colorful stones. A stone statue of a lion-like creature stood to either side of the doors, curling manes seeming almost to ripple in the flickering light -- at least, Misty sincerely hoped they were statues. For a moment she mistook the monks flanking the statues for carvings as well, until one of them moved.

 _And I thought crime-scene guard duty sucked hard,_ Misty thought.

"You again," said the left-hand monk in a tone of disgust as Ward came to a stop in front of them.

"Yes, me again," Ward retorted. "I brought someone else. A, uh, another bride of the Iron Fist."

"Hi," Misty said, sketching a little wave.

"Really," the monk said skeptically. 

"What, you think I'm lying?" Ward said.

"Bluntly? Yes, Hand filth."

Ward bristled.

"Hey, listen," Misty said hastily. "I don't know about this married business, but Danny's used the Iron Fist on me. He stopped the bleeding when I was badly hurt." She flexed her metal and plastic hand. "Now he's missing and I'd like a chance to go find him."

The monk seemed to be thinking about this, then said, "Hold out your hands, both of you."

Ward presented his right hand with a weary look that said he'd expected this. Misty thought about extending her metal hand, but decided not to be an asshole; she was sure Ward would do enough of that for both of them. She held out her left hand, and the monk encircled each of their wrists with one of his hands. His grip was firm and warm.

"Hmm." He let them go, looking mildly surprised. "You actually _aren't_ lying."

The other monk, who had been standing to attention and trying to look severe, now turned to look at them. "How many brides does the Iron Fist _have?"_

"Tell them who you are," Ward hissed out of the corner of his mouth.

Misty refrained from stepping on his foot only because it would have made them both look bad. "I'm Lieutenant Misty Knight of the NYPD. I'm a police officer -- that is, someone who enforces the laws and protects my city."

The monks looked at each other. "This one may pass," said Monk #2. "That one stays here."

"Hey!" Ward said.

It occurred to Misty that leaving him behind might make things easier, except she had absolutely zero idea of where to look, who to talk to, or what to expect inside. Ward at least had the benefit of having traveled all over the world with Danny while, presumably, listening to him talk about it. He must have paid _some_ attention.

But that wasn't what decided her. It was the look on his face -- not just anger, but hurt. Desperation.

"Listen, I'll keep an eye on him," she said. "Cop, right? I'll vouch for him."

The monks exchanged another look. Then Monk #2 took a red string from the folds of his robe. "You will be responsible for this Hand dog," he said, affixing it around Misty's wrist and then turning to Ward. Grimacing, Ward held out his hand and suffered to have a loop tied around his as well. "Do _not_ take this off while you are inside the city, either of you."

"What is it?" Misty asked, turning her wrist around. It just looked like thin red yarn.

"A symbol of your commitment," Monk #1 said, and he smiled slightly in a way that made her abruptly nervous. 

But the time to back out was rapidly passing, as the monks each stepped to one side and touched the great wooden doors, pressing on carvings. The doors sprang open and swung inward in perfect silence. A cool breeze blew into the tunnel, guttering the lamps. On the other side, there was a stone foyer and a second set of wooden doors, standing shut.

"Enter, brides of the Iron Fist," Monk #1 declared. "You are in the hands of the Thunderer now."

"Well, that sounds ominous," Misty murmured as they walked inside. The monk had tied the string around her left wrist. She prodded at it with the fingers of her right hand, but they didn't have enough sensation for her to be able to feel it, or get a finger under it. It wasn't too tight. It felt like nothing at all.

"The Thunderer is just Danny's teacher, back in the day," Ward said. "Davos's dad, I think."

"Right, like I said, sounds ominous."

Ward grunted acknowledgement, and then the doors slammed behind them with a hollow boom. With the doors in front of them also closed, it felt like being shut inside a tall stone box, dimly lit by two small lamps carved like elephants that filled the room with flickering shadows.

"Do you think we're supposed to knock?" Misty began, but just then the doors before them swung open without being touched.

They were no longer under New York.

A vast mountain vista stretched before them, huge peaks of snow and rock towering to rake the pale blue sky. It was an especially shocking contrast since they'd just been underground. Misty had to fight to keep from taking an involuntary step backward.

The city of K'un Lun, or at least she assumed so, sprawled across the mountainside in front of them. Misty thought vaguely that somewhere she'd picked up the idea that K'un Lun was small, really just a temple with maybe a village around it or something. But this was a _city._ From here, she mainly saw terraces of wood-tiled roofs, here and there a pagoda or temple rising above the rest, covering the mountainside in front of them.

There was no road leading to the city, just a path vanishing between enormous boulders. It looked like early spring; there were patches of snow with plants and mosses growing between them.

Misty glanced at Ward. The wind from the mountains ruffled his hair. He looked as astonished as she felt.

"I take it you've never been here before either."

Ward shook his head.

"Well ..." Misty looked down at the red thread around her wrist. "Guess we better go get to work."

The path took them through a narrow cleft in the rocks. They emerged onto a hillside covered with low scrub dotted with yellow and purple flowers. The path wound down the hill below them, between fields where children herded sheep and goats, past little wells circled in fieldstones and weathered statues of dragons covered in lichen and moss, dipping into a broad shallow valley full of rice paddies before the city began to climb up the other side, impossibly huge and vividly clear in the crisp mountain air. It looked so close it seemed as if she could reach out and touch the painted walls of the houses, the cobblestones of the steep twisting streets and the hanging red lanterns outside the doors.

"I am starting to think," Misty murmured, "that we might be a little out of our depth here."

She was getting chilly. In fact, she was shivering despite her jacket, even though the sun was warm on her hair and shoulders. And she was hungry, although she'd had a sandwich just before she headed out to meet with Ward. And she was nervous, a lot more nervous than she remembered being on the other side of the door.

 _What the heck,_ she thought. Had traveling through the door done something? Her alarm spiked just as she turned to look at Ward, and they stared at each other for a minute. Then Ward began frantically picking at the red string.

"Hey! They said we're not supposed to do that!"

"It _did_ something to us!" Ward snapped. Misty found herself short of breath; she was panicking, no wait, _she_ wasn't panicking at all. Ward, though --

"Ward!" she said, catching his hands.

"It won't come off," he said, staring at her.

"You're trying to untie it one-handed," she pointed out. "Do mine."

He struggled with the knot for a minute. It looked like a simple knot to undo, but no matter how he picked at it, nothing happened.

"I've got a pocketknife in my bag," Ward said grimly, slinging off his shoulder.

Misty caught his wrist. "Wait, okay? Let's not do that yet. I could probably break mine, and yours, by pulling on it. But let's hold off for now, until we understand what they for, all right? Those monks did say not to take them off. It might do something ... weird."

"It's doing something weird right now! Tell me I'm not the only one feeling this, okay?"

"You're not the only one," she admitted, and he huffed out a breath, and the panic -- which she finally had to concede was mostly not her own -- began to recede. Ward, she thought, did _not_ like being out of control of a situation.

"I'm starting to see why Danny left this fucking city," Ward muttered, and Misty grinned. She became aware that she was still holding his wrist, and quickly let go of it, even as she realized he was picking up on her slight surge of self-consciousness because it abruptly intensified.

They looked at each other for a moment.

"You can't like ... read my mind, or anything?" Ward asked nervously, with such synchronicity that she had an instant's alarmed concern that he could read _her_ mind.

"I don't think so. Can you read mine? Tell me what number I'm thinking of."

"No idea. You?"

"Nope," Misty said.

"Well, that's something," Ward muttered. He picked up his bag again. "C'mon, let's get to the city and find you something to eat and see if we can figure out where Danny and Colleen are and oh by the way how come we're _psychically linked now."_

"You can just admit that you're hungry," Misty said as they started descending the path.

"I'm not. I just had lunch."

Misty stopped in her tracks. "Wait, you're not hungry at all? Are you cold?"

"Not really," Ward said, and they looked at each other and then said together, "Danny and Colleen."

*

It took them about half an hour to get down the hill. When Misty looked back, she saw the tops of the gates rising above the boulders on the mountainside -- but the gates stood alone, leading to nowhere and nothing. Beyond them, mountains towered in every direction.

"Is this the Himalayas," she asked quietly, "or somewhere, um ... else?"

"Tell you the truth," Ward said, "I'm trying not to think about it."

"Good plan."

A monk -- a woman, this time, so perhaps a nun -- was waiting for them under the tall, wooden, pagoda-topped gate to the city. "You people again," Ward said before Misty could head him off. "Where's the Iron Fist?"

"What he means is," Misty said, holding up her hand to show off the red string, "we're here to see the Iron Fist. Er. Fists?"

"Yes, I know who you are, brides of the Iron Fist," the nun said. Ward grimaced but kept his mouth shut. "This way, please."

It was quite a hike up the steep cobbled streets. The people who lived here must have calves of iron, Misty thought. The buildings were wood and stone, their walls painted bright yellow and purple, red and pink, and their roof-tips curled up like pagoda roof. Some had carved wood animals perched at the corners, hawks and lions and dragons.

And nowhere did she see telephone or power lines, no motorized vehicles, no airplanes in the sky. The air was cool and smelled like wood smoke.

They passed market stalls and little gardens, women doing laundry, kids playing in courtyards and carrying buckets of water. It surprised Misty, a little, to see how cosmopolitan the residents of the city were. She had thought she'd be the only black person in sight, but actually there were quite a few, mostly in colorful African clothing of different styles. Most of the people she saw were East Asian, Southeast Asian, Indian, African. Ward actually stood out more than she did. Well, aside from the clothes they were wearing.

"Is it rude that we're dressed this way?" she asked, plucking at her jacket.

"It's probably better," the nun said over her shoulder. "Anything rude you might do will be known for the ignorance that it is, and not an intentional effort to offend."

Ward opened his mouth, and there was a flare of irritation that Misty was pretty sure was not her own. This time she did kick him in the shin, which (of course) made _her_ shin hurt. She was starting to share Ward's opinion on this place, pretty though it was.

From the noisy, bustling city, they passed through a narrow gate in a stone wall, and suddenly there was a tremendous hush as the nun closed the gate behind them. There were gardens around them, tended by a handful of other robed monks, and no one else in sight at all.

"Remain with me," the nun said, her voice hushed. "We are now within the temple."

This must be where Danny grew up, Misty thought, looking around. Everything in sight was perfectly well ordered, the gardens neatly tended, the paths raked. She could hardly think of anywhere less suited to bouncy, chaotic Danny Rand.

Danny, whose presence she was continually aware of, in the form of various quicksilver emotions and also a growing sense of nearness. She was gradually getting better at picking out different people, now that she had decided to embrace the madness and just go with the idea that apparently she was feeling her friends in her head. Colleen felt like a pool of calm with occasional flares of irritation. Danny was ever-changeable, but mostly a sunny sense of warmth. Ward ... Ward was all edges and annoyance and sarcasm and frequent flashes of worry, surging and receding before she could a good feel for it. He seemed to use the irritation to cover it up.

She wondered what she felt like.

They entered a dank, chilly stone tunnel cut into the mountainside. No wonder Danny and Colleen were cold, Misty thought. They didn't seem to be hungry anymore; someone had apparently fed them. She didn't think they were in pain or scared. But she also didn't think they were free to move about however they liked.

She was just wondering how the K'un Lun government would react to being told they couldn't detain another country's citizens, when their guide stopped at a dark wall of stone bars and Misty felt a surge of someone else's delight. Then Danny's voice said, "Misty! Ward!" and he was leaning through the bars, holding out his hands. Colleen was beside him. Both of them wore the red strings too, she couldn't help noticing.

"You're an idiot," Ward snapped, letting Danny clasp his hands, while Colleen gave Misty a hug through the bars. She felt as if she was being wrapped up in their happiness from all sides, almost overwhelming, but very pleasant.

"So it _was_ you guys," Colleen said.

"We're here to get you out." Misty looked up at the stone bars of the cage. It looked very punchable. "So how come you two haven't just ... fisted your way out of here?"

Danny looked sheepish. "They know how to block the Fist here."

"Yeah, we're chi-blocked," Colleen said. "They want us to fight."

"Fight who?" Misty asked.

"Each other!" Danny said. "They've been telling us you can't have two Iron Fists at once, so they want me and Colleen to fight for it."

"We refused, of course," Colleen said. "We've been arguing our case, but not getting anywhere."

"So the married thing doesn't make any difference, huh?" Ward asked.

"Well, not so far, but -- wait --" Danny looked as if the penny had just dropped for him. Comprehension seemed to be dawning on Colleen, too, and Misty thought it was probably a good thing for Ward that she didn't currently have the Iron Fist.

Colleen said slowly, "How ... _exactly_ ... did you two get here, anyway?"

"We claimed conjugal rights," Ward said, his voice dry as dust. Misty tried to step on his foot but he was too fast for her.

"I changed my mind about the tournament," Colleen said. "Someone please kill me now."

"No, but it's great that you guys are here!" Danny said, his delight flaring brilliantly and making Misty's heart race despite her attempt to remind herself that it wasn't her emotion any more than Colleen's resigned irritation was. "I bet we can get another trial --"

"Wait, they put you on trial?" The irritation this time was her own, but it took her a minute to realize it. This _better_ be temporary. "For _what?"_

"Er ... desecrating the Iron Fist, but --"

"What's the penalty?" Ward asked, another surge of that veiled worry rising up under the surface, only to be submerged beneath annoyance as soon as he realized everyone could feel it.

"So let's not worry about that, because --"

"Colleen," Misty said.

"Execution," said Colleen, "but --"

"Okay, we are breaking you out _right now,"_ Ward said, and Misty experienced a surge of adrenaline bordering on panic, at least some of which was her own.

"Wait!" Danny and Colleen said together, and Danny went on, "They almost never actually do it. Lei Kung told me they haven't executed anyone since his grandfather's time --"

"Unless he's ancient, that can't possibly be that long," Ward said.

"He's over 300."

"... okay then, but --"

"And they definitely won't execute me if I have dependents," Danny said, and waved his hands vigorously at the two of them, while they stared at him.

"We're not your dependents," Ward said, managing to pack a truly impressive amount of horror into his tone without actually raising his voice. "We're your accidentally married kung fu spouses or ... something."

"I want this day to not have happened," Colleen said, pressing her forehead against the bars.

"No, but I bet we can make a case for it," Danny said eagerly. "I mean, it's got to be easier than fighting our way out past several hundred trained martial artists, right? Ohhh, you know what we really need -- a lawyer. Do you think one of you can go back to New York and get Matt?"

"I'm not sure if they'll let us leave," Misty said.

*

She turned out to be right -- Misty hated it when she was right about things like that -- but after a lot of coming and going by various monks and nuns acting as go-betweens, a second trial had been arranged for morning. Which was something, at least.

Misty was fully expecting to be thrown into the cell next door to Danny and Colleen's, but instead she and Ward were offered lodging outside the temple. It turned out to be a very nice room with a large window looking down on the valley, a huge bed piled high with furs, and a bathroom that had a sunken stone tub and even a flush toilet.

"Think they'll be okay in there?" Misty asked, sitting on the edge of the bed and picking idly at the red thread around her wrist. The sun was setting over the valley, edging the curling smoke trails of a thousand chimneys with gold and red.

"We'd be able to tell if they aren't," Ward pointed out.

True. Right now, she could tell that Danny and Colleen were a little chilly, but very content. They must be snuggled up together.

She looked up and saw Ward looking at the single bed, and she didn't need to be a mind reader to know what he was thinking. It was written all over his face. Finally he said abruptly, "Dibs on the bathroom," and vanished through the bathroom door before Misty could even point out facetiously that they were, technically, married. Which was probably just as well.

Misty flopped back on the bed and threw her arm over her face. She was aware of Ward aggressively trying not to feel things in the bathroom, and _that_ made her much too conscious that she was trying not to feel things when Ward was around, too.

They were here for Danny and Colleen, she thought grimly, and sat up. This was a business trip. Well, kind of.

But she was also in a mystic kung-fu city, and how often did you get to see one of those? She got up and went to the window. The sun had set, and now the city was coming alive with lamps and lanterns. It was a more living and vital kind of light than the city lights she was used to, a tapestry of warmly glowing colors spreading down the mountain at her feet.

There was a tap at the door, and a young -- intern? No, that wasn't right. Rookie? Novice? -- brought a tray with two cups of steaming tea and two large bowls of noodles floating in broth. He lit a lamp beside the bed, another on the windowsill, then bowed and left without speaking.

"Hey, food's here," Misty called toward the bathroom.

"At least they're treating us halfway decently," Ward said, coming out with his hair dampened and slicked back. "Is the door locked?"

Misty tried it, and found that it was. "I can probably open it," she said, flexing her metal hand. "If we need to. Might be a good idea to save that for a last resort, though, if we don't want to end up sharing a cell with Danny and Colleen."

There was a low wooden table in front of the window, where they ate looking down at the glowing city, with a breeze coming in through the half-open louvers.

"We could go out the window," Ward said. "The security here is terrible."

"Yeah, and then we're stuck on a mountain, on the wrong side of a gate only they can open."

"I didn't say it was a _good_ plan."

Misty twirled her chopsticks in the noodles. She'd learned to use chopsticks left-handed, mainly through eating out with Colleen; the prosthetic, as incredible as it was at a lot of tasks, couldn't quite manage that level of fine motor control. "It's nice here, you know?" she said quietly. "Peaceful. I wouldn't mind coming here on vacation someday, as long as I could leave."

"It's the 'as long as you can leave' that was the main problem for Danny, I guess," Ward said, looking at the tray and the flickering lamp, anywhere but at her. "I don't think he hated it here. He just ... wanted to be somewhere that wasn't here."

"Yeah. I get that."

She looked down the mountainside. The valley below the city was dotted with lights -- farmhouses, she guessed. Here and there, the golden dot of a lamp moved firefly-like across the dark hillside: farmers bringing in their flock? Messengers?

"I ought to warn you, you might not get a very pleasant night's sleep with me in the bed next to you," Ward said at last, sounding like the words were being dragged out of him with pliers. "I have ... dreams."

"Me too," she said, gesturing with the prosthetic arm. "Don't go thinking you're special or anything."

Ward smiled and looked down at his bowl. The lamplight made his face softer and less sharp-edged. Something warm and soft curled in Misty's chest, and Ward actually blushed a little and ... dammit.

It was easier to deal with the emotion-sharing thing when she tried not to concentrate on it and just kind of went with it. As long as she didn't dwell on it, she could almost imagine the emotions she was feeling were entirely her own. Right now, though, she was all too aware that the warm feeling in her chest wasn't just coming from her, and it occurred to her that she could really get to like Ward Meachum, even if she wasn't married to him already.

That thought made her snort out a tiny laugh.

"What?" Ward asked.

"Oh, nothing." She reached for the cooling cup of tea beside her noodle bowl. "So tell me about running around the world with Danny. Anything like this ever happen?"

"Pretty much constantly. Well, minus the magic city and the accidental Iron Fist marriage."

"So no."

"Look, it's not my fault if my weirdness scale gets recalibrated by the day," Ward said, and then he told her about stealing magic guns from gangsters and the time that Danny tried to smuggle a piglet into a hotel for various complicated reasons.

Yeah, when she just relaxed, she could have fun here. The food was good, the company was good, and she'd stayed in a lot of hotel rooms that weren't half this nice. She just needed to not think too hard about the fact that they were stuck in a very nice prison with very nice jailers in a city that didn't exist. And tomorrow they might be let out, or they might have to fight their way back to a gate that they probably couldn't open.

Good reason to get a good night's sleep, then.

In the one big bed.

Misty ducked her head and laughed.

"What?" Ward said. He sounded (and felt) mildly annoyed, as if he thought there was a joke he wasn't being let in on.

"Nothing. Just ... big day tomorrow. Big, _weird_ day tomorrow. You think we should take turns sleeping, set up a watch maybe?"

"I don't know." Ward started to pick at the red string on his wrist, noticed what he was doing and jerked his hand away. "With the door locked, we'll hear if anyone comes in. I'm a pretty light sleeper."

"May as well be rested."

"Yeah," he said, with a glance at the bed. "Listen, I can see if they have a rollaway or something --"

"Here?"

"-- or spread out some blankets on the floor. Whatever."

"Ward. We're grown-ass adults. We can sleep in the same bed without it being a big thing." She smothered a yawn. "One thing I gotta do first, though."

She didn't ask if it would bother him and she certainly didn't ask permission. She just shrugged out of her jacket and started taking off the prosthesis.

"Can't sleep in it," she explained. "I mean, I _could,_ but it's not really a good idea. High-tech as this thing is, my arm's still gotta breathe." She grinned at him. "Wanna hold my Maserati arm? I need to go wet-wipe the stump in the bathroom."

"Uh," Ward said, but then she laid it in his hands and got up. She had supplies in her bag. And she noticed that beyond a certain startlement, she didn't feel Ward being disgusted or upset. Just curious and interested. He was poking at the fingers when she went into the bathroom.

"You break it, you bought it!" she called out the half-open door.

"I can afford it," he retorted.

When she came out of the bathroom, stretching her shoulders in relief not to have the weight of the arm dragging her down, she was both charmed and amused to see that Ward had put a pillow on the table and laid the arm carefully on it. He was sitting on the end of the bed, taking off his shoes.

"Didn't want to break it," he said, quirking a sideways grin.

Misty flopped on the bed. Ward showed no signs of getting all the way undressed, which was probably a good idea. All he'd done was take off his jacket and shoes. Unfortunately this left him in a tight black T-shirt that made her all too aware that Ward Meachum was in really good shape.

"Good night," she said before her thoughts and, more importantly, her emotions could run down lines that would be hard to walk back from.

"Night," Ward said quietly.

Misty rolled over and blew out the lamp. The room was suddenly, profoundly dark. Beside her, there were small rustles as Ward got into bed. The bed creaked and dipped under his weight.

It should have disturbed her, having someone beside her. She hadn't fallen asleep next to someone in ... hell, she didn't even _know_ how long.

But it wasn't weird. It didn't even feel out of place. It was kind of nice, having someone else's warmth in the bed beside her, someone else's breathing in the dark. She kept wanting to reach out and touch him, although she didn't need to; the constant low-level awareness of his emotions was all she needed to know he was there. She sensed a tense nervousness -- Ward's -- that slowly began to smooth out, like the subtle melting of tension from his shoulders and spine ... she could almost _feel_ that, even without touching him, until the tension was nearly gone and there was only a quiet, calm feeling.

Danny and Colleen came into her awareness again very gradually. She hadn't been aware of them in particular during dinner with Ward; it seemed that strong emotions, strong sensations, made an impression, but when there was nothing much happening, it was easy to stop noticing them, like the humming of an air conditioner in a room. You only noticed it when things got quiet. And now, in the quiet of her own head, she began to notice them again, but very subtly, in the form of lazy, sleepy contentment. They were either falling asleep, or already there.

 _Night, guys,_ she thought at them.

... On the one hand, she couldn't _wait_ to get back to New York and stop sharing her head with three people. (At least, it _better_ not be permanent. If so, she was coming back here and having a chat with some monks, pronto.)

But on the other hand ( _the one I don't have,_ she thought with sleepy dark humor), she really didn't mind it as much as she would have expected. It was _nice_ to fall asleep with three people's emotions wrapped around her, alone and not-alone, with Ward's quiet breathing in the bed next to her.

He flinched suddenly; his breathing hitched, and there was a ripple in the emotional calm.

Nightmares, he'd said.

"Shhh," she whispered, rolling to the side to reach out a hand and brush his shoulder with her fingertips. There was also a feeling from Danny and Colleen's way -- Danny, she thought, wordless and soothing, a feeling of all-will-be-well. Danny was good at that.

And Ward sank back into sleep, deeper and deeper.

She fell asleep with her hand on his shoulder, a light thread of human connection stretched across the bed.

*

She woke some time later. There was moonlight streaming through the window, and it didn't take her long to figure out that what she'd taken for a dream, sparked by the unaccustomed presence of another person in the bed beside her, was actually really happening.

Danny and Colleen.

Were having sex.

In their cell.

Ward was very definitely awake next to her, too. _Very_ awake.

 _Knock it off,_ Misty thought at Danny and Colleen as loudly as possible, but she was pretty sure their emotional ... _vigor_ was drowning everything else out.

"I ..." she began, and had to laugh quietly to herself. She propped herself up on her elbow. "I don't think they know we're awake."

"Yeah," Ward said. "No shit."

It was extremely difficult to concentrate on anything else. She was desperately aroused, desperately aware of Ward's arousal, and trying very hard not to be.

_Knock it OFF. Don't make me come down there and turn the hose on you two._

"Aargh," she moaned, collapsing facedown on the bed. She pulled the pillow over her head. It didn't help, because it was coming from _inside_ her head.

There was a sudden sharp movement from beside her as Ward threw back the covers.

"Where are you going?" Misty asked, rolling over.

"To see if I can find a pair of scissors to cut off this goddamn fate-string or whatever the heck it is. Unless you want to give breaking it a try," he said, turning toward her. There was a note of desperation in his voice. "I know you thought it was a bad idea but I'd say it's looking like a pretty good idea right now."

He ... kind of had a point. "I'll need to put my arm back on."

Ward gave a quiet, strangled laugh. "Never mind, there's a pocket knife in one of the side pockets of my luggage. I'll just cut it."

Misty sat up and swung her legs off the bed. It was cool in the room. In the moonlight, she watched Ward -- a black and white shape, pale arms and ink-blot T-shirt -- kneel and fumble with the luggage. There was the sudden bright glow of a flashlight, half-shielded; he was holding it between his knees, struggling to get the tip of a knife under the string around his wrist.

"Fuck!"

"I can help," Misty said.

"It won't -- _damn_ it --"

His frustration and misery gnawed at her; it hurt. "Ward," she said quietly. She got up and knelt beside him, gently closed her one hand over his. "Let me help."

He hesitated, then relinquished the knife to her. Not that it made a difference. He was right; the knife did absolutely nothing. It just slipped off. The string might as well be steel wire.

"So considering how K'un Lun seems to operate," Ward said between his teeth, "this probably means that we're all tied together with unbreakable bonds of fate or whatever-the-fuck, but right now I wish they would just goddamn finish up and fall _asleep._ How long can this possibly take?"

He had a point. Also, she now knew more about Danny and Colleen's sex life than she'd ever wanted to know. But mostly, she was just ... very aware of Ward, and how close to him she was, leaning over his shoulder with his hand in her lap and the warmth of his body against hers. And when she turned her face toward his in the moonlight, she was almost touching his cheek.

There was a moment when it seemed like the easiest thing in the world to close that tiny-but-significant distance and brush his lips with hers.

Then, with a sudden sharp motion, he took the knife back and closed it with a snap. He dropped it on top of his duffel and got up, dislodging her.

"Where are you going?" she asked. Her knees protested when she struggled to her feet. Damn it, she wasn't a kid anymore.

"To sleep in the bathtub," Ward said, his voice wound tight. "And think about strangling Danny in the morning."

If he went into the bathroom, he was almost certainly going to masturbate, which would pretty much do it for her. In fact, just thinking about it -- "Ward, get back here."

He hesitated. For a long moment, he just stood there. Misty sat on the edge of the bed, and Ward, reluctantly, sat on the far edge, with the entire bed and all its rumpled bedcovers between them. 

"Misty, don't take this the wrong way, but I can't stay here."

"You mean something's gonna happen if you stay here," she said. "You don't want that thing to happen, just say so."

Ward huffed out a frustrated breath. Misty wished she could see his expression better in the dark, but she also felt that this conversation might be easier when she couldn't. "Look, it's not that, it's -- there's no way you _aren't_ well aware of what I'm feeling right now, and it's not ... all them, it's not even _mostly_ them. It's not that I don't want it to happen, it's that I don't want it to happen _like this_ , and I fuck these things up, the mother of my child hardly even wants to talk to me, and --"

"Ward?"

"Yeah?" he said. She was glad she couldn't see into his head, not directly. His emotions were enough of a tangle.

"Shut up and get over here. Grown-ass adults, remember? There's no point in being uncomfortable when we don't have to be." And then, realizing she hadn't actually come out and said it: "I want it too."

He moved in the dark, and then his warmth was against her, and his mouth was on hers. And yeah, yeah. She wanted this.

Ward broke the kiss. Somehow they'd both fallen onto the bed, limbs tangled around each other. His hands were under her shirt, resting on her waist. "They're going to feel this," he murmured.

"You sure? They seem pretty busy."

Ward laughed, his breath ghosting across her neck, and she had to laugh too. The situation was just so weird, so absurd. But it helped to have someone to share it with.

Slowly, he ran a hand up and down her back. Now that they were on the edge of actually going through with it, there was something delicious, she found, about holding back. They moved together slowly in the dark, wrapped up in arousal that both was and was not their own.

"I haven't got condoms," Ward murmured into her neck. "I mean, I didn't come here expecting to ..."

"I've got an implant. As for the rest of it ... you had a lot of sex lately?"

Ward snorted. "The only person I've had sex with in the last five years is the mother of my kid. Uh, not that we've been doing it lately. That's over."

"You mean I'm getting more than you are?" she asked, grinning as she nuzzled against his lightly stubbled throat. He smelled good. "By about one person, I mean. Anyway, I'm good with it if you are."

Ward groaned faintly as she worked on unbuckling his pants one-handed.

Misty thought about lighting a lamp, but she didn't want to get up again, and anyway, it was somehow nice in the dark. Just two bodies moving together, mapping each other's skin with hands and mouths. She'd fantasized about Ward before, sure she had. But she hadn't expected the gentleness of his hands on her body, or the soft rapturous noise he made when she pushed him down on the bed and straddled him.

When at last she collapsed beside him on the bed, sweat drying on her body in the cool breeze through the window, he put an arm around her and she curled against him. 

She had completely lost track of Danny and Colleen's emotions -- it was true; strong emotions of your own made it extremely hard to concentrate on anyone else's -- but now she sensed a faint, distant chagrin.

 _'Salright, guys,_ she thought at them, though she was unsure how much of it would come through. _I had a good time. Hope you did too._

"So exactly how awkward is this gonna be in the morning?" Ward murmured.

"Uh ... I dunno. Ask me tomorrow."

He laughed softly. "I guess as wedding nights go --" he began, and got that far before Misty managed to extricate her arm and covered his mouth with her hand.

"I think that sentence has gone about as far as it should."

Ward snorted into her hair and then reached down to pull up the blankets over them. It was a little too chilly to sleep uncovered. And then they lay curled together, emotions sliding slowly into lazy relaxation and drowsiness. Misty thought sleepily about red strings and dumbass decisions and decided that she'd made worse ones, so she wasn't going to worry too much about it.

"Ward?" she said softly, after a little while. He was so relaxed she couldn't actually tell if he was asleep or not, even with the awareness of his emotions; all she felt from him was a sort of pleasant drifting.

But he said softly, "Yeah?"

"What's your kid's name?"

Ward rolled to face her, jostling warmly against her side, and propped himself up on his elbow. "Lexie. Short for Alexis." He hesitated; there was a slight frisson of nervous anticipation not her own. "Want to see a picture?"

"Sure."

He leaned off the bed to retrieve his phone, which involved a lot of fumbling around in the dark before he found his jeans. Then he rolled back over and held the screen where she could see it. No bars in K'un Lun, just a photo of a baby that looked, to Misty, like a pretty typical white baby with some little curls of dark hair and large, cloudy bluish eyes. If there was any of Ward in her, it was hard to see. Maybe there was something of him in the petulant scowl.

But she felt the emotion coming from Ward, a tangled-up _lovingwarmness_ and _guilt_ and a ... a feeling she didn't think she'd ever felt before, at least not with that intensity: the desire to hold this little thing and protect it and curl around it and just keep it safe from everyone and everything. It was overwhelming, and it poured through her and she experienced the strange sensation of seeing Ward's daughter through his eyes, not a weird-looking, kind of squashed little baby, but something unique and special and wonderful that she'd do anything for.

"She's lovely," she murmured, and turned to press a kiss to his shoulder.

*

Ward was up and in the bathroom when Misty woke up. She rolled over and, in the daylight, looked with a slight grin at the clothes scattered around the bed.

She was glad to find that she didn't have regrets; Ward would have sensed them and she'd have hated to do that to him. Instead she rolled over and sat up, and was sitting naked on the edge of the bed when Ward came out with a towel wrapped around his waist.

He saw her, and desire-awe-wonder-lust smacked her unexpectedly in the hindbrain. "Hi," Ward said, wrestling his emotions under control. It was fascinating to feel it, because, beyond a slight widening of his eyes, it hadn't shown on his face at all.

"Hi yourself," Misty said. "Save me any hot water?"

"Uh ... I think there's lots. No shower, though, just a tub." He hesitated, then moved forward, and leaned down to give her a brief, almost chaste kiss. Misty put her hand behind his head to stop him from going anywhere and showed him what she thought about that half-assed attempt at a kiss. He went down abruptly to one knee in front of her and almost lost his towel.

"Now that's a proper good morning," Misty said when the lip-lock broke.

"Uh-huh." Ward rolled with unexpectedly supple grace to sit with his back against the bed, next to her bare knees. This gave her a good vantage point to run her hand through his wet hair. "So do we want to _talk_ about this, or ..."

"There's something to talk about?"

"Mmmm." He leaned his head against her hand. Ward Meachum was a cuddler, she thought, amused. Go figure.

"I don't know about you, Ward, but I for one am going to save any and all conversations about last night until we're somewhere that we don't have a four-way party line on the emotions, sound good?"

Ward winced, inwardly and outwardly. "Gotcha."

But she stroked her hand over his shoulder as she got up, and she was all too aware of him watching her as she went into the bathroom.

She bathed very briefly (it felt a little too much like there were too many people in the tub with her) and came out to find that Ward was dressed and eating. Someone had taken away last night's tray and brought breakfast, a rice dish with sliced fruit and tea.

"At least they aren't starving us," she remarked.

"True." 

He watched as she powdered the prosthesis and fit it back into place; she could sense his interest, a keen sharp sense of attention on her. Not prurient, just curious, and she found that she liked it, and regretted it slightly when he stopped watching her to look around the room instead.

"Yeah," Ward said, "as prisons go, this is comfy. You want to work out a jailbreak plan now, or wing it?"

"Diplomacy, Meachum. It saves so much stress later."

"Winging it is, then," Ward muttered, and picked up a piece of fruit.

*

Half the morning was gone by the time some monks came to collect them. This group had less of the feeling of a polite tour guide for the foreign visitors, Misty thought, and more of a "guard" kind of vibe. They weren't armed, but they moved like people who could handle themselves in a fight. Misty wished she had her service weapon with her. The only reassuring thing was that she didn't sense anything alarming from Danny and Colleen's direction, just a general kind of nervous anticipation.

She and Ward were taken into the temple by one of the main entrances this time, through a grand gate and a series of gardens, and then into the side of the mountain through a pair of vast doors, taller and grander than the gates to the city.

"This place is huge," Misty murmured to Ward.

"I guess there's not much to do under here except tunnel around underneath the mountain," Ward muttered back, but fortunately they reached another set of doors before he could say anything that was going to get them thrown out or tossed into a tiger pit.

These doors swung open in perfect silence onto a great open space, filled with light that looked like sunlight, but couldn't possibly be -- they were under a mountain! As they stepped inside, Misty looked up and saw that the soaring, vaulted ceiling admitted shafts of light through a skylight inlaid with panes of clear and colored glass.

The floor was a vast mosaic of stone tiles, and a gallery ran all around the arena, allowing spectators -- of which there were a few -- to look down at them. What Misty mainly cared about, though, was Danny and Colleen in the middle of the room.

"Guys!" Danny yelled, waving. They met in the middle. Misty clasped Colleen's hand and Ward gave Danny a slightly-harder-than-friendly swat on the shoulder.

"Listen, guys," Danny said, blushing. "I'm _really_ sorry about last night. We thought you were asleep, and we, uh --"

"We _were_ asleep," Ward said pointedly, and Danny blushed harder.

"I'm not sorry," Misty said promptly. She grinned at Colleen. "If I were you, I don't know how I'd feel, hearing that kind of talk from my boyfriend -- sorry, husband. Are _you_ sorry?"

"Er," Colleen began, darting a glance at Ward.

Misty nudged him. "I got no regrets. You?"

Ward grinned. "Nope. It was great. But then, you know that already, don't you?"

Colleen flamed up to her hairline, and Misty could only assume that Ward-Colleen relations had just gone into another downward spiral. Fortunately, just then someone banged a gong (saved by the bell, Misty thought) and Danny and Colleen turned to look down toward the far end of the arena, so she and Ward did likewise.

A woman had stepped out onto the gallery, tall and regal, with flowing robes and a bindi. "That's Priya," Danny murmured. "Davos's mom. She, uh, she doesn't like me very much."

"Really," Ward muttered back. "You know there's a book, 'How To Win Friends and Influence People', Danny? I think you should read it, because you seem to spend your life doing the opposite of --"

"Shhhh," Colleen hissed at him.

Priya began speaking in a language Misty didn't know. She then switched to something else -- Mandarin, maybe? Misty was picking up Danny's tension loud and clear, and she was about to ask him if he could translate for the rest of them when Priya switched to English.

"Iron Fist," she said, looking down at them. "We have deliberated your case throughout the night. It has been pointed out --" Not by her, was clear from her tone. "-- that nowhere is it stated in law or custom that the Iron Fist cannot share Shou-Lao's gift with his or her mate. Or mates, as the case may be." She swept a withering gaze across them. "But it must be proven that the bond is true."

 _Oh good,_ Misty thought, _this certainly bodes well._ She sensed the others' apprehension piling on top of her own, and it occurred to her that this entire empathy situation was tailor-made for runaway mob panic. She'd seen it firsthand in crowds without any need for K'un Lun weirdness. With this in mind, she made an effort to tamp down her own anxiety, trying to be a calming influence on the others.

"The two Iron Fists will begin the trial there," Priya declared, pointing to the other end of the arena. "You other two, over to that end."

The monks closed in to separate them, and Misty was in motion before she had time to think, blocking them. "No, do what she says," Danny said, putting a hand on her arm. "Priya's tough, but she's fair. She won't cheat us."

Maybe not, but Misty doubted if she had any intention of making it easy for them. Still, the whole point was to _avoid_ having to fight their way out. She shared a glance with Ward and then the two of them stood aside and allowed the majority of the monks herded Danny and Colleen to the far end of the arena. Danny and Colleen were nervous but not scared, so that was something, right? Next to her, Ward flexed his hands, his shoulders stiff and an undercurrent of near-panic thrumming through the link.

"Calm down," Misty murmured, touching his arm.

He jerked away and shot her a wild-eyed glance. "I _am_ calm."

"Really? You think it'll work to lie to me about that?" He acknowledged her point with a grimace, and she jerked her head toward the far end of the arena. "Look, the best thing we can do for them right now is keep our heads."

"Something I'm extraordinarily good at."

"You seem pretty good at it to me," she said, and he glanced at her. His emotions were a fractured tangle. From the Danny and Colleen end, she sensed Danny sending calming thoughts at the rest of them, and Colleen being tense and ready and annoyed.

"The test begins," Priya declared, her clear voice ringing through the arena.

 _Good acoustics in here,_ Misty couldn't help thinking, especially without any kind of electronic augmentation. Could you boost someone's voice with chi? Prior to a day ago, she would have laughed at the idea, but given what she'd seen and felt since coming here --

There was a deep rumbling, and the ground shuddered underfoot.

Misty took a couple of quick steps toward Ward, until their hips bumped together. Around them, the floor had begun to ... move?! Panels drew back into the walls, the mosaic breaking up into pieces.

"What is this Indiana Jones shit?" Misty demanded. Ward didn't answer, but she could feel his incredulous irritation as strongly as her own. The stone they were standing was stable, but the entire floor was fracturing into a latticework of slender bands of stone. Heat from below hit Misty with ovenlike force.

"Is that _lava?"_ Ward said in disbelief.

"I don't think that's physically possible," Misty said, trying to convince herself as much as him. It certainly _looked_ like lava, roiling slowly far below them. The air was already so hot it hurt to breathe. Sweat beaded her forehead and dampened her shirt.

"Without speaking, with only the strength of your bond, you must guide them safely to you," Priya's voice rang out above the thrum of hidden machinery rearranging the floor.

"You people are really fucked up, you know that?" Ward yelled at her across the roiling lava pit. Then one of the monks delivered a sharp jab to the side of his neck, and he went abruptly silent.

"Ward?" Misty asked, turning to look at him in alarm, before someone else jabbed her in the neck with a sensation that felt like a pinched nerve, tingling all through her throat and sternum. Misty whipped around, but he was too fast for her, gliding out of the way before she could get a proper chokehold on the son of a bitch. She tried to yell after him, but when she opened her mouth, nothing happened.

She looked sharply at Ward, who touched his throat and looked back at her, wide-eyed. She felt the sharp tang of his fear, but he didn't seem to be actually _hurt,_ any more than she was. They just couldn't talk.

Through the bond, Danny and Colleen's fear had surged when she and Ward were attacked. She tried to send reassuring feelings, and then she looked through the shimmering heat separating them and saw that there had been some kind of a scuffle. A couple of monks were down on the narrow strip of floor that remained on that side.

"Ward!" Danny called across the arena. "Misty!"

Misty held up her hands and tried to semaphore _We're okay!_ She wasn't sure if it got across, but the emotions probably did, because Danny and Colleen's emotional turmoil settled down a little. They were standing back to back, the monks regarding them from a wary distance.

"The Iron Fists will submit," Priya called, "or the test is forfeit."

"Submit to _what?"_ Colleen shouted back.

"You will both be blindfolded. Your bondmates will guide you across."

 _What?_ Misty tried to say. Nothing came out, of course.

Danny looked across at them, through the shimmering heat. "We trust you," he called.

Ward waved his hands wildly in a chasing-off gesture. _Don't!_ was so clear he might as well have said it.

Misty tried once again to speak. It just ... wouldn't work. The pain had faded, but her throat just didn't want to make sounds. She could manage a kind of breathy whistle, but that was about it.

Whistling ... hmm. She pursed her lips and tried a low whistle, then flashed Ward a quick grin. They couldn't take _that_ away.

Ward gave a broad shrug: _So what?_ Misty nudged him and looked back across the lava. It was bakingly hot; sweat trickled down her neck.

Danny and Colleen, she saw, had submitted to being blindfolded, and even more alarmingly, were now having their hands tied -- in front, at least, not behind, but _still._

"We trust you!" Danny shouted across the lava pit. "Just think things at us! We'll be able to tell."

Incredulous skepticism from, probably, Ward and Colleen. 

"Begin," Priya said calmly, stepping back, and the platform under Danny and Colleen's feet began to fracture and pull apart. Danny and Colleen sensed the movement underfoot and both started to scramble back, but there was nothing behind them except a drop into the lava.

No! Misty screamed at them soundlessly, and gave a piercing whistle.

And -- they stopped, balanced precariously on ever-dwindling points of safety underfoot. Danny turned to look across the lava pit, as if he could actually see them. "Let us know where it's safe to step," he called, and then bumped Colleen with his shoulder and held his foot out cautiously, starting to bring it down on empty air.

 _No!_ She whistled again.

Danny stopped, felt around with his foot, and settled it when their reactions told him it was safe. The narrow strip of still-intact stone tiles was just a little wider than his foot.

Misty traded a look with Ward, who looked as panicked as she felt. Her shoulders had knotted up until they hurt. K'un Lun owed her a really good massage after this, damn it. She needed _something,_ some point of grounding, and she reached out in silence for Ward, finding his right hand with her left one. He gripped it back, knotting their fingers together.

Danny took another cautious step, feeling his way along with his toes. Colleen bumped lightly into him from behind, following him.

And step by step, Misty and Ward guided them across. After awhile they had worked out a pretty consistent hot-cold, yes-no pattern, and Danny and Colleen responded instantly to the whistles and involuntary surges of alarm when they started to take a step off the safe tiles.

It was like the world's worst version of a trust fall exercise, and when Danny and Colleen finally stepped onto the safe, sold rock on Misty and Ward's end of the lava pit, Misty was drenched in sweat and holding Ward's hand so hard she was probably leaving bruises.

Ward fumbled with the bonds around Danny's wrists, and Misty untied Colleen. Colleen yanked the blindfold off, and blanched as she turned to look back at what they'd crossed.

"This place is _fucked up,_ Danny," Colleen snapped. "If you tell me they mean well, Danny, so help me ..." She looked toward the monks gathered around at a cautious distance. "Unblock them now!"

It was anticlimactic, a quick jab in the neck, and Misty huffed out a breath and exclaimed, "What the hell, what did they just _do?"_

"Yeah, that's how they're blocking the Fist." Danny flexed his hand and glared around. "You guys had no right to put Colleen in danger like that."

"What about taking years off _our_ lives?" Ward demanded, rubbing his throat. "Okay, so we passed their stupid test; can we leave yet?"

There was a low grinding and rumbling as the pieces of the floor slid back into place. In moments it looked solid, though Misty made a mental note to never, ever set foot on it if she wasn't being forced to.

Priya seemed to have no such issues. She descended a flight of steps to the floor and crossed it in a slow, stately swishing of robes, flanked by an honor guard of monks. As she approached, the four of them closed ranks. No words were exchanged; the four of them moved silently in sync, Danny's arm bumping Misty's, her shoulder pressing against Ward's.

Priya stopped in front of them and regarded them with a calm, level gaze.

"It seems the bond is true," she said in a tone that very much suggested she wished otherwise. "Iron Fist --" This addressed to Danny. "Do you claim marital rights in these spouses?"

"Um ... yes?" Danny said.

Priya sighed deeply. "Then kiss," she said, and there was a slight glint in her eye. "Each of you, kiss each of the others, and your marriage will be sealed and legal."

".... kiss each other," Ward said.

"We do this and we can go home?" Misty asked. "Is this the last thing?"

"It is." Priya dipped her head in something akin to a nod, tucked her hands into her robe, and stepped back.

There was a long awkward pause when they just all stood there looking at each other, and then Colleen said firmly, "Fine. Let's do this. We'll start."

She took hold of Danny, who got with the program and caught her in his arms, and their kiss and the emotions that went along with it made Misty a little weak in the knees.

Colleen turned to Misty, who shrugged and grinned: why the hell not, especially with the warm and wonderful aftereffects of that initial kiss still thrumming in her bloodstream. Colleen's lips were soft and gentle, and Misty ruffled her hair before letting her go. Colleen smiled at her, and they turned to find out how the boys were getting on with it.

With a certain amount of difficulty, it seemed, mostly through failure to coordinate. They managed to miss each other's lips twice and then whacked their noses together. 

Ward rolled his eyes, laughed softly, and caught hold of Danny with one hand on either side of his curly head. He kissed Danny lightly beside his mouth, then on his forehead, then pressed his cheek against Danny's temple, and they just hugged each other for a minute.

"Does this mean I get Danny now?" Misty asked. Danny let go of Ward and grinned nervously at her, then darted a quick look at Colleen. "Oh, knock it off, we're all married now," Misty said, and with the others' warm emotions still coursing through her, she kissed him lightly and chastely on the corner of his mouth.

Ward had now turned to Colleen, who looked like she would rather drive her katana through his ear; her resentment of this aspect of the entire arrangement was coming through loud and clear. "You know," he said, "we don't actually have to --" 

Colleen shut him up by the simple method of grabbing him by the ears, and planted a fast, closed-mouthed kiss on his lips, looking like it was the best substitute she could get for kicking him in the nuts. Then she jerked back as if she'd been stung, and gave him a strange look. With all the free-floating emotions running through the bond, it was a little hard to pin down some of them to any specific person, but Ward's affection for Colleen was clear enough: chaste and gentle and warm and true, a softer and lighter echo of the way he felt about Danny.

Ward shrugged a little, looking embarrassed. "I couldn't not love anybody who loves Danny that much," he said quietly, while Colleen continued to stare at him and Danny looked (and felt) like he was about to dissolve into a puddle of delight on the spot. Ward turned away from Colleen as if he'd had about all the eye contact he could take, darted his gaze to Misty, and then she realized that, oh God, the two of them were all that was left, and how had she somehow failed to take into account that kissing Ward was going to be part of this?

For a minute they just looked at each other, and Misty found herself feeling bizarrely embarrassed in a way she hadn't about kissing Colleen or Danny. She wished, for an instant, that they were somewhere private -- that she could do this in all the ways she'd imagined, and wanted _him_ to imagine. But then again, it wasn't the first time. And that was what gave her the nerve to step forward and put her arms around his shoulders. (Well, that and the awareness that all their emotions -- her tension and desire, and Ward's nervousness -- were flooding to the other two.)

Ward settled one hand on her waist; the other brushed back her hair, running lightly across the side of her face. "Gotta do this properly later," he said in a voice meant for her ears only.

"I don't know how to feel about the implication you don't think we did it properly this morning," she murmured back, and he flushed. She grinned, he smiled back, and they moved together, a brief bumping of noses -- "You aren't very good at this, are you, Meachum?" "Quiet, you." -- and then they got it lined up perfectly, a gentle clashing of teeth and the soft warmth of his mouth and the slight scrape of his stubble.

They might be doing it in the middle of an arena for an audience, but in that instant it was only the two of them, his hand tangled in her hair and her metal hand over his shoulder and their bodies pressed together.

Then Colleen and Danny started _clapping,_ the _jerks._ Misty broke the kiss and they rested their foreheads together for a minute; then she grinned up at Ward who grinned back at her.

"Next time we do that, it's going to be in a place with no peanut gallery," she murmured.

"Cosigned."

*

The wedding was followed by a party, and at that point, things actually started getting fun.

They held it in an enormous garden outside the walls of the temple, a series of terraces with cascades of flowers just beginning to bud. Later in the season, Misty thought it would probably have been a riot of color and perfume. This early in the year, it was soft and green, filled with waterfalls and statues. There was a vast amount of food, mostly vegetarian, some of it familiar or at least familiar-ish (skewers of various kinds, rice dishes, flatbreads and curry) and some of it utterly different from anything Misty had ever eaten, full of interesting spices and fruits and things she couldn't even identify.

She'd been reassured several times, by multiple people, that they _would_ be taken back to the gate when they wanted to go, but it was evident that Danny was finally enjoying himself, so Misty hadn't pushed the issue. Danny's obvious relaxation and trust in the people around them was infectious enough to get the rest of them to unbend enough to enjoy themselves, eventually.

"These people locked you up and were going to execute you," Ward snapped at him.

"It's just ... it's not _like_ New York. We passed the tests. Things are okay now. I don't really know how to explain it?" Danny shoved a handful of skewers at him. "Eat something."

People wandered in and out constantly, monks from the temple and people from town who Misty suspected were drawn primarily to the free food. Danny chattered happily with people he knew in several different languages, most of which Colleen seemed to know too. This left Ward and Misty stuck with talking to the handful of people who knew English, or using the three or four words of Mandarin that Ward had apparently picked up while traveling with Danny.

"I can say excuse me, thank you, how much is that, and please don't kill us," Ward told her. "In at least five languages. Which tells you all you need to know about traveling with Danny, really." 

But the food was good, and there was alcohol, and Misty had managed to find time to slip off to their room and change into clean clothes that weren't drenched in sweat because _lava pit, what the fuck._

As night began to fall, colored lamps and paper lanterns were lit on the terraces, and fire pits were stirred to life. Misty thought of the previous night when she'd admired the city from the window. Now she was out in it, in a cool fragrant night, with the sounds of cheerful conversation in a dozen languages in her ears.

With a glass of some sharp, clear alcohol in hand, she went wandering in search of her ... well, spouses now, she supposed, at least in this place. Instead she found Priya, sitting beside a fire pit with the firelight flickering on her face and a child of about six or seven in her lap.

"Hi," Misty said.

The woman gave her a cool nod and set the kid down. Misty couldn't tell if they were a boy or a girl, but Priya gave them a pat on the rear and sent them scampering off. If she was worried about small children running around in a place with so many open flames, it didn't show.

Misty took a seat beside her, on the low stone wall surrounding the fire pit. "I wanted to ask, if you don't mind." She plucked at the red string on her wrist. "What does this do?"

Priya's smile was thin and dry. "Nothing. It's symbolic."

"Oh, come _on._ It won't come off. You're telling me we're all feeling each other's feelings just because?" As she said it, she quickly ran through her mental file to make sure all was well from the Danny-Colleen-Ward directions. All she felt was contentment, so she supposed so.

"You may take it off when you return to your world. Whether you put it back on is up to you."

"That, uh, that doesn't answer my question at all," Misty said, but Priya rose and departed in a swirl of skirts and veils.

*

She found them all later, on one of the lower terraces, in a sunken garden lit with the warm glow of dozens of colored paper lanterns. There were cushions spread on the stones and Danny was sitting crosslegged on a cushion with Colleen's head in his lap, running his hand idly through her hair as he chatted with Ward, who was sitting next to him and leaning his back against a stone wall.

For a few indulgent moments, Misty stood in the shadows at the top of the steps and drank in the calm of the scene and their quiet, warm emotions. Ward wasn't drinking, but he looked _relaxed_ , every line of his body settled in contentment.

Danny murmured something to him and they both looked up, and a little spike of pleasure hit her: their happiness to see her. Colleen raised a hand in a languid beckoning motion, and Misty smiled and came down the steps. She settled on Ward's other side, and then -- because she'd literally never done it with a boyfriend in her life, and it looked like Danny and Colleen were having fun -- she set down her drink on the stones and lay back with her head in Ward's lap. He stiffened a little and then hesitantly settled a hand on her forehead.

Hmmm. This _was_ kind of nice. She lay and drifted, letting the conversation go on over her head, looking up at the impossibly vivid stars above the mountain peaks, eclipsed by occasional showers of sparks when someone stirred up a fire pit on a different level.

She was jolted out of a half-drowse by people moving around her, and sat up to find that Colleen had disappeared off somewhere and Danny was just coming down the steps.

"Hey," Danny said, grinning at them. "I was just talking to Priya and the elders. They want to know whether we want to stay to, ah, consummate our wedding night here, or go home."

Misty felt Ward's dry humor surge in the emotional ambient, half warm affection, half irritated sarcasm. "Oh, let's see," Ward said. "We _could_ stay here, where we can all feel everything each other are feeling and they're very likely going to give us a single room with one very, very large bed. _Or ..._ "

"Okay, yes, fine," Danny said, disgruntled, and went to find Priya.

*

Climbing the path to the gate while sleepy and a little bit drunk wasn't what Misty would have picked as an ideal ending to the evening, but it was actually gorgeous out here, and the crisp night air helped clear her head. The stars looked sharp enough to touch overhead. No one had bothered giving them a light, but the moon was bright enough to keep them from stumbling on the steep path.

"Hey guys," Colleen said softly from below. 

Misty and Ward had been climbing ahead of the other two, but now Misty looked back to find that Danny had stopped a little way back down the mountainside, and was looking back toward K'un Lun.

It was breathtaking from here, a sprawling city of lights, glowing warmly through the night. Misty was a city girl born and bred, and she'd always been more appreciative of the bustle and glare of Fifth Avenue at night than of waterfalls and mountainsides, but this took her breath away.

The side of Ward's hand brushed hers. She turned her hand to lace her fingers through his, and they stood together looking at the city's luminescent sprawl. It was almost too beautiful to be real.

And it was also a place that gave people tests that involved clambering around above a floor made of lava, Misty reminded herself. That too.

But the stillness of the night filled her chest with warm/wistful emotions, some her own, some not.

"Danny?" Ward called softly down the mountainside. "You need a little while? We don't have to go up right away."

Danny's shoulders squared, and he took a deep breath and turned to look up toward them, his face a pale shape in the moonlight and his curly mop of hair edged with the lights of the city behind them. "Nah. I'm good. Thanks for stopping."

The monks were waiting for them at the gate in the moonlight. One of them gestured for Danny and Colleen to hold out their arms. They did, and Misty felt the slight tingle of sensation as the monks did ... _something,_ a dance of careful pressure across the inside of Colleen's tattooed arm and her shoulder, and then Danny's.

"Got it back?" Misty asked, and for answer Colleen held up her hand and made a loose fist. A faint white glow lit up her hand from within, shining through bones and tendons, and then faded.

"Awesome," Ward said. "Let's go _home."_

The gates appeared to lead to nothing, standing isolated on the mountainside, but when the monks opened them, there was the stone foyer beyond, lit with a single lamp. One of the monks stepped inside with them. He picked up the lamp. Behind them, the gates stood open, and Misty took one last look back. The city's lights glimmered on the mountainside, and the stars were clear and bright overhead. Reluctantly, she turned her back and looked ahead, rather than back.

The monk opened the doors in front of them. Rather than the corridor filled with lamps that she and Ward had come through, the doors opened onto darkness.

"Uh, hey," Misty said, balking, but she was given a shove from behind, and as she stumbled out into the tunnel, the doors closed with a hollow boom behind her, and then they were abruptly in pitch darkness.

Only for a moment, because a soft amber glow brightened around them. Danny held up his hand like a lamp, casting the light over the tunnel.

It was the same brickwork tunnel, but it seemed smaller, somehow, than Misty remembered. And there was no sign of gates, or monks, or anything else out of the ordinary. Just an old brick storm drain, sloping downward.

"Danny," Colleen said, her voice gentle. She took his non-Iron-Fist hand. Misty felt, for a moment, empty in a way that she couldn't quite put her finger on, and then she realized it was because she didn't know what Danny was feeling. She wasn't getting the others' emotions anymore, only her own.

"It'll open again," Danny said softly. "Somewhere. I know now that it opens more often than I used to believe. More than once every fifteen years, anyway. They ... never told me that." He hesitated, then added, "A gate, once opened, is never really closed."

No one else said anything. Ward got a flashlight out of his bag, and Danny let the light of the Iron Fist die. They began walking in silence back up the tunnel, and Misty thought how odd it was to be feeling only her own emotions again, and nothing else.

She picked at the red string as they walked. As Priya had told her, it came loose easily -- so suddenly, in fact, that she nearly dropped it. 

_Whether you put it back on is up to you,_ Priya had said. Metaphorical, Misty assumed, but she still put it carefully into her pocket.

 _Should've bought a proper souvenir in the magic city,_ she thought. _A jade statue or incense burner or some shit like that. I could have put it on my desk and told them my globetrotting billionaire friend brought it back from Nepal._

_I went to a mystic kung fu city, and all I got was this lousy piece of string._

She smiled to herself in the dark. Well, hell, maybe she'd go back again someday. Like Danny had said, gates that had opened once could always open again.

*

On the one hand, it was nice to find out that having someone else in her head for the better part of two days wasn't going to drive either her or them around the bend, or permanently ruin their relationship. On the other (metal) hand, it was a couple of days after they got back before Misty saw any of the others again, and she was pretty much completely okay with that.

If she were to venture a guess, she would have thought it would be Colleen showing up at one of her crime scenes, or Danny calling with one of his semi-regular dinner invitations. But instead it was a knock on her door, just as she was about to kick back with a glass of rotgut after a too-long day dealing with the endless workload left behind by her impromptu little magic-city vacation. And when she opened the door, there was Ward Meachum, hands shoved in the pockets of his wool coat, wearing a tight little smile that grew brighter when he saw her. For an instant, she expected that little jolt of pleasure not her own, which made her realize that in just the short time they'd been in K'un Lun, she had come to expect it whenever he saw her.

"I know it's late," he said. "If you don't want --"

"Oh, knock it off, c'mon in." She stood back to wave him through the door. She had her arm off and was just wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants, but he'd already had all of _this_ all over all of _that,_ and anyway if he was going to drop by unannounced, he was gonna deal with a hard-working girl being comfortable. "I picked up pizza on the way home. There's leftovers if you want it."

"I already ate," he said. He took off the coat and slung it over the back of a chair, then after a moment took off his suit jacket as well. "Thanks. You know, I should've texted first, I guess. I just ..."

"I get how it is." She moved a stack of crime-scene photos off the end of the couch. "There's whiskey if you want it, and I think I've got a half-open bottle of wine around here somewhere."

"I don't drink." He smiled briefly and tightly. "Recovering alcoholic."

"Oh," she said. "Sorry. Right. I ... knew that." In a vague kind of way, mostly because of Danny mentioning it. But it made her realize how much she didn't know about him. How much they didn't know about each other.

It was very odd, now that she thought about it, to have this much intimacy behind them while still being effectively strangers to each other. And she didn't need to be able to feel Ward's emotions to know that he was most likely having similar thoughts.

"Coffee, then?" she offered. "I know it's late, but I probably won't be knocking off too soon. Or Coke if you want."

"Coffee sounds good. A little cream, if you've got it."

"Gotcha." She went to see if the pot was still warm, or if she needed to microwave it.

"I should've called, I know," Ward said from the couch. "I'm not good at this. Ask Bethany."

"That's your ex?"

He huffed a laugh. "Yeah."

She _missed_ having his emotions to read like an open book. She'd all but forgotten how buttoned down Ward was; she'd gotten used to being able to know what he was thinking, or at least feeling, without having to work on it. And she'd also seen just enough of him in K'un Lun to realize how often the surface emotion didn't match what he was actually feeling. She'd had the translation key for a short while, and now suddenly she was flung back into having to translate Meachum when she hadn't had a chance to become even remotely fluent.

Still, she'd always liked a challenge. 

She brought his coffee and picked up her whiskey glass off the coffee table. Belatedly, it occurred to her to ask, "You mind if I drink around you?"

Ward shook his head. "It's me drinking that's the problem, not other people."

"True," she admitted. "But you know, I'm a cop. I work with a lot of alcoholics; it goes with the territory. And there's a whole range."

"Yeah, well, I'm the 'it's my problem, not yours' variety."

She nodded and then set down the glass and went and got herself the rest of the leftover coffee, a half-cup or so. Ward watched her and smiled a little and hid it behind his coffee cup. Again, she'd give ... well ... a few of her vacation days, at least, to know what he was thinking.

Hell! She wasn't good at skirting around things. She got enough of that at work. "So are we gonna talk about it?" she asked.

"You mean how we got married to our friends, and also incidentally each other, in a magic city that's probably on some sort of other planet or something?"

"Um." She thought of that kiss, Ward's hands in her hair that was still damp with sweat from the heat of the _fucking lava_ , and smiled in spite of herself. "Yeah. That."

"Really, what's there to talk about?"

Okay, that _was_ a teasing smile, and playfulness dancing in his eyes. Still, she remembered how he could smile when the emotions underneath were sharp enough to cut. Or the other way around: the knife blades on top, the warmer and softer emotions underneath.

"What happens in the mystic monk city, stays in the mystic monk city?" she asked.

"If you want it to," Ward said.

"You're a tough nut to crack, aren't you, Meachum?"

"I don't know how I feel about the conversation going straight to nut-cracking."

"Man, holiday specials must be stressful for you macho types."

This time he laughed out loud, with a quick flash of teeth. Misty grinned and leaned back with her coffee cup in hand and the stump of her arm propped up on the back of the couch.

"You know," she said, "I think marriages performed in one country are still legal in another, aren't they? You think we're still legally hitched?"

There was a quick spark of real surprise on his face before he smiled another of those dry Ward smiles. "I think you need a treaty for that. Anyway, you can't be legally married to more than one person at once. At least not here."

"True. Well, so much for the tax benefits."

Ward rolled his eyes and shook his head. "You know ..." he began, but didn't continue.

"You all right?" Misty prompted after a moment.

"Yeah. I don't know, I was thinking --" He shook his head again, and looked at her with a strange, hard-to-read expression on his face. Damn it, weird as it had been at the time, she was going to wish for that emotion-sharing thing until the day she died, wasn't she? "It was so easy there. I didn't think, or I guess I should say, I wondered -- you know, one reason why I haven't come by to see you is because I didn't want to know for sure how much of it was that place and how much was ..." He gestured with his coffee cup, not quite meeting her eyes. "You and me."

"Mmmm. You know," she said quietly, "you called me to go with you -- me, and not anyone else. Before all of what happened, happened."

"Yeah, because Danny had healed you."

Misty felt the corner of her mouth tug in a smile. "That's the only reason?"

"Maybe not," he admitted, smiling very slightly.

"Look, we're both adults. We have a past. Gotta tell you, though, I don't think it's just the mystic bullshit that made the sex good. Or was I the only one having fun?"

"You definitely weren't the only one," he said with a laugh.

"Bring an overnight bag?"

Ward's eyebrows went up. "No," he said, setting the coffee aside. "I figured it might be taken the wrong way."

"You're probably right," she admitted. "You want to go home tonight?"

A pause, and then he said quietly, "No."

And there were other things she could have said: she could have told him she liked him, that she'd liked him from the moment she'd met him, and nothing she'd seen or heard since then had made her like him less. But there were some people you had to keep off balance, just a little. And she had a feeling Ward Meachum was one of those.

So instead she scooted toward him on the couch and met him halfway.

The kissing was still pretty damn good without the telepathy, and his hand tangled in her hair just the same as it had in the lava-pit room. She was getting completely lost in it, her hand sliding under the tails of his shirt, when Ward suddenly broke the kiss and tipped his head to look at her ear. "What's that?"

"Shit!" She clapped her hand over her ear. She had actually forgotten completely about the red string. She owned several pairs of large, dangly earrings -- a minor uniform violation for an active duty detective, but kind of fun to indulge in now that she had a desk job. She was wearing a pair of them today, big curvy hoops with gold dangles, and had twisted the red thread around one of the hoops. It went well with the other colors and complemented the red shirts she liked.

Ward looked thoroughly amused, the bastard. Misty took her hand down and scowled at him. He only looked more amused, then twisted his hips -- a rather nice effect -- and reached into his pocket. "Here. If it makes you feel any better." He flipped open his wallet and handed it to her.

"Well now, Mr. Meachum, I don't know whether to be flattered or insulted or just read you your rights --"

"It's what's in the -- oh for God's sake." Looking thoroughly flustered, to her secret delight, he held open one of the pockets with his fingers and shook the contents into his hand. There was a small photo of what Misty assumed was the same dark-haired baby as in the phone photo (this time in a yellow onesie with ladybugs on it), a flattened piece of origami paper folded into a bird, and a familiar squiggle of red string.

"Ward Meachum, you sentimental fool," she said, delighted all over. She picked up the origami. "Did Danny make this?"

"None of your business," he snapped, snatching it back and stuffing everything back into the wallet. "Anyway, there you go, we're both idiots."

"Mmm." She touched her earring, then touched his wrist, a light brush of her fingers just below his cuff. "Ward. I like that you keep it with you. And the other things -- I'm glad you showed me."

"Hmm. Did it increase my chances of getting laid tonight?"

"By quite a lot, if you shut up now," she said, and cupped her hand on the side of his face, while he grinned at her. "I mean, we _are_ married, you know ..."

If she'd learned nothing else in K'un Lun, it was that waking up with the guy you'd gone to bed with was a good feeling. As she drew him in for a kiss, she was thinking that she wouldn't mind getting used to that.


End file.
